For anyone aged 60 and under, the name Blue Peter brings back fond memories of daily after-school sessions in front of the television.
Whether it be the pang of envy when a child was seen being given one of the show’s famous badges, or the desire to go ahead and make whatever masterpiece had been crafted out of loo-roll tubes and sticky-black plastic, the recollections come thick and fast.
But now, Blue Peter – the longest-running children’s TV show in the world – is set to disappear from living rooms everywhere and move to online-only as the BBC scraps CBBC, its home since 2012.
The corporation is also going to move BBC Four online, put Radio 4 Extra onto BBC Sounds only and cut 1,000 jobs as part of major cash-saving plans.
The move marks the sad demise of a show that has fostered creativity among generations of children, a programme which at its peak had eight million viewers but has sadly dramatically plummeted in viewers’ affections in recent years.
Beginning in 1958 with original presenters Christopher Trace and Leila Williams, the programme has gone on to foster 38 other on-screen stars, including John Noakes, Peter Purves, Anthea Turner, Konnie Huq and Matt Baker.
And the pets have been almost as famous, with ten dogs, five tortoises, nine cats and two parrots featuring down the decades.
Whilst every viewer past and present will have their own favourite moment, several stand out in the national consciousness.
They include the infamous scenes of Lulu the elephant marauding in the studio during a 1969 episode, with the farce culminating in her deciding to urinate and defecate on the floor.
But there are also sagas that those involved with the show would rather not remember, including when vandals destroyed the iconic Blue Peter garden in 1983 and the BBC had to apologise in 2007 when it emerged a poll to name the show’s new cat was rigged.
Presenters too have sparked controversy, most famously when in 1998 the then up-and-coming Richard Bacon – now a well-known radio and TV star – was sacked after he admitted snorting cocaine in a nightclub.
Blue Peter began at 5PM on Thursday October 16, 1958, with the first episode a being a brief 15 minutes long.
It was the brainchild of producer Biddy Baxter, who went on to become the show’s editor in 1965.
She created the famous Blue Peter Badge, which was awarded to children and adult in recognition of an achievement or for appearing on the show.
At the time, it was billed in Radio Times as: ‘Toys, model railways, games, stories, cartoons. A new weekly programme for younger viewers with Christopher Trace and Leila Williams.’
Williams stayed with the programme until 1962, while Trace remained a presenter until 1967.
Noakes was the the longest-serving member of the team, clocking up just over 12 years on the show between 1965 and 1978.
He was part of the line-up when Lulu the baby elephant made her famous appearance. At the time, his co-presenters were Purves and Singleton.
The elephant was brought into the studio from Chessington Zoo with her keeper ahead of the presenters’ trip to what was then Ceylon (now Sri Lanka).
The segment quickly descended into farce when Lulu was given water, which prompted her to urinate. She then immediately defecated and refused to leave, dragging her keeper across the studio.
She then stood on Noakes’s foot, prompting the presenter to stand in the pile of dung she had left on the floor.
As the presenters tried to continue speaking, Lulu then continued dragging her keeper across the floor, causing him to fall over.
Speaking about the hilarious moment in 2014, Baxter said: ‘Lulu was a baby elephant of enormous strength and Smithy, her keeper, was a tiny, rotund gentleman.
‘He came with this horrendous stick with a sharp metal spike like a spear and I said, ‘I am terribly sorry, Mr. Smith, but you can’t have that, you will have to put it away.’
She added: ‘It all went pear-shaped because they gave her water. First of all, she urinated, which melted the floor paint and made it like an ice rink, and on top of that she defecated, and Smithy was so upset.’
Another famous moment came in 1977, when Noakes scaled Nelson’s Column in Trafalgar Square in an effort to clean pigeon mess from it.
Stunning images showed him peering from the top of a ladder balanced against the back of the statue of Lord Nelson.
In 1989, hapless presenter Mark Curry accidentally decapitated a Lego figure of a man that had taken a month to build. On another occasion, he drove a miniature train on wheels into part of the set.
When the Blue Peter garden was vandalised in 1983, fans of the show joined forces to restore it to its former glory.
The vandals had trampled the grass and poured fuel in the fish pond at the open space at the BBC’s Television Centre in London.
It was later suspected that footballers Les Ferdinand and Dennis Wise had been involved in the crime. It was reported that he ‘helped a few people over the wall’ but did not take part in the vandalism himself.
However, in 2018 he insisted that he had been making a joke when he made the comments.
‘It was the worst joke I had ever made in my life, but I can assure you myself and Dennis Wise had nothing to do with the BBC garden,’ he said.
‘I have actually spoken to the people from the BBC and Blue Peter and they said: “We know you had nothing to do with it”.
‘They actually know who did it but it never came out.’
Blue Peter is also famous for its ‘makes’ – demonstrations of how to make something useful or prepare food. The segment is known for the catch-phrase of ‘here’s one I made earlier’.
What is the most famous make of all was Blue Peter’s take on Thunderbird’s Tracy Island. The BBC issued a factsheet for viewers so they too could construct the model at home.
Controversy came in 2007 when it emerged that an online poll to name the show’s new cat had been rigged.
New kitten Socks was named after the results of the poll were changed, with viewers originally wanting to call the animal Cookie. The BBC apologised.
A year earlier, the BBC was also fined £50,000 by regulator Ofcom when a child visiting the studio was asked to pose as a phone-in competition winner after a technical glitch meant the show could not receive calls.
But what was the show’s biggest controversy came in 1998, when Bacon was fired from his dream job after admitting he took cocaine in a London nightclub.
At the time the BBC issued a statement from Lorraine Heggessey, head of children’s programmes, which said: ‘It is sad that such a talented presenter as Richard Bacon has not only let himself and his colleagues down but, most important of all, he has let down the millions of children who watch Blue Peter.’
A producer told Bacon him he would never work in television again.
More than two decades on, Bacon’s career has seen him present multiple television programmes for the Corporation, as well as for Channel 4 and ITV.
Despite being hugely popular in its first few decades, the show’s viewing figures have continued to decline in recent years.
In 2011, the number of viewers had dipped to around 400,000.
The following year, the show’s BBC One slot was taken from it as it moved onto CBBC only, meaning it lost viewers who would have seen it purely because it had been on the bigger channel.
By 2013, the average audience was 100,000. Real embarrassment came in June 2017 when it emerged that no one had watched a repeat of a Blue Peter episode that year.
Announcing moves that included the decision to make CBBC online-only Director-General Tim Davie said yesterday that the BBC must reform to stay relevant and continue to provide great value for all’ and become ‘digital-first’.
As part of the shake-up, BBC World News and BBC News Channel will merge to create a single 24-hour TV news channel serving both UK and international audiences.
CBBC will move online to iPlayer with BBC Four, while Radio 4 Extra could become available on the BBC Sounds service only.
Regional TV news programmes South Today in Oxford and Look East in Cambridge are also among the services being scrapped as part of the ‘blueprint to build a digital-first public service media organisation’.
The plans being proposed form changes to the BBC’s content and services which it says will save £500million in its first phase.
The corporation needs to save an additional £285million after the Culture Secretary announced the licence fee would be frozen for the next two years and scrapped by 2027.
As part of plans to become ‘digital first’ broadcaster, the BBC said it will cut up to 1,000 jobs from the public-funded part of the BBC over the next few years.